Easy to use remote sensing and GIS analysis for landslide risk assessment

Many countries throughout the world suffered from the natural risks, they cause a large damage in property and loss in human lives, we cannot prevent the occurring of these hazards but, it is possible to reduce their affect in saving human lives and reducing the damage in properties. Several methodologies have been conducted to predict the suitable model for landslide assessment. The susceptibility maps of landslide hazard generated by combining the remote sensed data with the capability of GIS (geographic information system). We discussed different type of algorithms and factors for modeling the prediction of landslide risk assessment such as SVM (support vector machine), DT (decision tree), ANFIS (adaptive neural-fuzzy inference system), AHP (analytic hierarchy process), ANN (artificial neural network), probability frequency of landslides occurrence factors model and empirical model. The study evaluated various parameters that are responsible for landslide occurrence and the weighting for each parameter and its importance to probable of landslide activity. AHP method, Weights of evidence model, and back propagation method have been applied for weighting the factors. We found that using ANN algorithm with more than ten factors will give high accuracy result especially if the validation performs by field surveys data

The Important Role of Internet Multimedia and Computer-Mediated Communication in Supporting Learning Styles and Strategies: Implementations and Implications in the Syrian Context

This study aims to shed some light on the interaction between Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) represented by Internet multimedia and Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) on one side, and different learning styles and strategies on the other side. We will concentrate on the cultural factor to identify the Arab learners’ preferred styles, and then we will see how these styles are associated with particular strategies in both the classroom and the online environments. We will identify the importance of designing learning experiences that match students’ preferences. We will see how Internet multimedia and CMC can provide these learners with many activities and materials to practise some strategies associated with their preferred learning styles. The Learning Resources Website will be taken as an example to illustrate how it can accommodate learners’ styles and strategies through the existing multimedia and CMC materials and tools. Finally, we will see how this study can reflect well on the Syrian context; some implications for both teachers and learners will be identified with some suggestions for future research

Multi-Fusion algorithms for Detecting Land Surface Pattern Changes Using Multi-High Spatial Resolution Images and Remote Sensing Analysis

Producing accurate Land-Use and Land-Cover (LU/LC) maps using low-spatial-resolution images is a difficult task. Pan-sharpening is crucial for estimating LU/LC patterns. This study aimed to identify the most precise procedure for estimating LU/LC by adopting two fusion approaches, namely Color Normalized Brovey (BM) and Gram-Schmidt Spectral Sharpening (GS), on high-spatial-resolution Multi-sensor and Multi-spectral images, such as (1) the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system, (2) the WorldView-2 satellite system, and (3) low-spatial-resolution images like the Sentinel-2 satellite, to generate six levels of fused images with the three original multi-spectral images. The Maximum Likelihood method (ML) was used for classifying all nine images. A confusion matrix was used to evaluate the accuracy of each single classified image. The obtained results were statistically compared to determine the most reliable, accurate, and appropriate LU/LC map and procedure. It was found that applying GS to the fused image, which integrated WorldView-2 and Sentinel-2 satellite images and was classified by the ML method, produced the most accurate results. This procedure has an overall accuracy of 88.47% and a kappa coefficient of 0.85. However, the overall accuracies of the three classified multispectral images range between 86.84% to 76.49%. Furthermore, the accuracy assessment of the fused images by the Brovey method and the rest of the GS method and classified by the ML method ranges between 85.75% to 76.68%. This proposed procedure shows a lot of promise in the academic sphere for mapping LU/LC. Previous researchers have mostly used satellite images or datasets with similar spatial and spectral resolution, at least for tropical areas like the study area of this research, to detect land surface patterns. However, no one has previously investigated and examined the use and application of different datasets that have different spectral and spatial resolutions and their accuracy for mapping LU/LC. This study has successfully adopted different datasets provided by different sensors with varying spectral and spatial levels to investigate this. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2023-07-04-013 Full Text: PD

Fusion Landsat-8 Thermal TIRS and OLI Datasets for Superior Monitoring and Change Detection using Remote Sensing

Currently, updating the change detection (CD) of land use/land cover (LU/LC) geospatial information with high accuracy outcomes is important and very confusing with the different classification methods, datasets, satellite images, and ancillary dataset types available. However, using just the low spatial resolution visible bands of the remotely sensed images will not provide good information with high accuracy. Remotely sensed thermal data contains very valuable information to monitor and investigate the CD of the LU/LC. So, it needs to involve the thermal datasets for better outcomes. Fusion plays a big role to map the CD. Therefore, this study aims to find out a refining method for estimating the accurate CD method of the LU/LC patterns by investigating the integration of the effectiveness of the thermal satellite data with visible datasets by (a) adopting a noise removal model, (b) satellite images resampling, (c) image fusion, combining and integrating between the visible and thermal images using the Grim Schmidt spectral (GS) method, (d) applying image classification using Mahalanobis distances (MH), Maximum likelihood (ML) and artificial neural network (ANN) classifiers on datasets captured from the Landsat-8 TIRS and OLI satellite system, these images were captured from operational land imager (OLI) and the thermal infrared (TIRS) sensors of 2015 and 2020 to generate about of twelve LC maps. (e) The comparison was made among all the twelve classifiers' results. The results reveal that adopting the ANN technique on the integrated images of the combined TIRS and OLI datasets has the highest accuracy compared to the rest of the applied image classification approaches. The obtained overall accuracy was 96.31% and 98.40%, and the kappa coefficients were (0.94) and (0.97) for the years 2015 and 2020, respectively. However, the ML classifier obtains better results compared to the MH approach. The image fusion and integration of the thermal images improve the accuracy results by 5%–6% from the proposed method better than using low spatial-resolution visible datasets alone. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2023-07-02-09 Full Text: PD

Clinical and electrophysiologic characteristics of left septal atrial tachycardia

AbstractObjectivesIt was the purpose of this study to define the electrophysiologic (EP) identity of left septal atrial tachycardia (AT).BackgroundThe clinical and EP characteristics of this particular type of arrhythmia have not been fully described.MethodsA total of 120 patients with AT underwent invasive EP evaluation. Five patients (two men and three women; mean age 49 ± 15 years) with left septal AT were identified. Mapping of the right and left atrium was performed using conventional electrode catheters (five patients) and a three-dimensional electroanatomic mapping system (three patients) followed by radiofrequency (RF) ablation at the earliest site of local endocardial activation.ResultsFive tachycardias with a mean cycle length of 320 ± 94 ms were mapped, and the earliest endocardial electrogram occurred 22 ± 10 ms before the onset of the surface P-wave. Three left septal ATs were found to be originating from the left inferoposterior atrial septum and two from the left midseptum. During tachycardia, positive (three patients), biphasic negative-positive deflection (one patient), or isoelectric (one patient) P waves were recorded in lead V1. The inferior leads demonstrated a positive or biphasic P-wave morphology in four of five patients (80%). Four patients were given both adenosine and verapamil during AT. In three of four patients, verapamil successfully terminated AT after adenosine had failed. Adenosine successfully terminated AT in one of four patients. Successful RF ablation was performed in all patients (mean 2.2 ± 1.7 RF applications) without affecting atrioventricular conduction properties. No recurrence of AT was observed after a mean follow-up of 14 ± 8 months.ConclusionsLeft septal AT ablation is safe and effective. There was no consistent P-wave morphology associated with this particular type of AT. This arrhythmia appears to be resistant to adenosine and moderately responsive to calcium antagonists

NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF HEAT TRANSFER ENHANCEMENT FOR DIFFERENT BASE FLUIDS USING AL2O3 ON F.P.S.C UNDER SOLAR SIMULATION

In this research paper, the solar irradiance of flat plate solar collector was evaluated using experimental and numerical analysis. In the experiment, an automatic solar simulator was designed and built to simulate the solar irradiance. The simulator was controlled by an Arduino board. The light source and fabrication of the simulator were used for a wide range of testing and the comparison was made between different cases. The test was performed on a flat plate double glazing solar collector with different base fluids; ethylene glycol (EG), glycerine, and water. To enhance the heat transfer, Al2O3 nanoparticles having a diameter of 20 nm were added. In order to investigate the effect of volume fraction on the heat absorption, three-volume fractions, 0.2%, 0.45, and 0.6%, were used in this study. Laminar flow was considered with a flow rate of 1 L/min. Solar irradiance was measured from 11:00 to 13:00 on September 25th, 2016. COMSOL 5.2a was used in a numerical analysis of flat plate solar collector. A good agreement between numerical and experimental for all cases was observed. The maximum temperature difference between inlet and outlet was found when the (water/ Al2O3) was used as a working fluid at a volume fraction of 0.6%

Automatic keypoints extraction from UAV image with refine and improved scale invariant features transform (RI-SIFT)

In this study, the performance of Refine and Improved Scale Invariant Features Transform (RI-SIFT) recently developed and patented to automatically extract key points from UAV images was examined. First the RI- SIFT algorithm was used to detect and extract CPs from two overlapping UAV images. To evaluate the performance of RI-SIFT, the original SIFT which employs nearest neighbour (NN) algorithms was used to extract keypoints from the same adjacent UA V images. Finally, the quality of the points extracted with RI- SIFT was evaluated by feeding them into polynomial, adjust, and spline transform mosaicing algorithms to stitch the images. The result indicates that RI-SIFT performed better than SIFT and NN with 271, 1415, and 1557points extracted respectively. Also, spline transform gives the most accurate mosaicked image with subpixel RMSE value of 1.0925 pixels equivalent to 0.10051m, followed by adjust transform with root mean square error (RSME) value of 1.956821 pixel (0.17611m) while polynomial transform produced the least accuracy result

Noninvasive Estimation of Epicardial Dominant High-Frequency Regions During Atrial Fibrillation

[EN] Introduction Ablation of high dominant frequency (DF) sources in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) is an effective treatment option for paroxysmal AF. The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of noninvasive estimation of DF and electrical patterns determination by solving the inverse problem of the electrocardiography. Methods Four representative AF patients with left-to-right and right-to-left atrial DF patterns were included in the study. For each patient, intracardiac electrograms from both atria were recorded simultaneously together with 67-lead body surface recordings. In addition to clinical recordings, realistic mathematical models of atria and torso anatomy with different DF patterns of AF were used. For both mathematical models and clinical recordings, inverse-computed electrograms were compared to intracardiac electrograms in terms of voltage, phase, and frequency spectrum relative errors. Results Comparison between intracardiac and inverse computed electrograms for AF patients showed 8.8 ± 4.4% errors for DF, 32 ± 4% for voltage, and 65 ± 4% for phase determination. These results were corroborated by mathematical simulations showing that the inverse problem solution was able to reconstruct the frequency spectrum and the DF maps with relative errors of 5.5 ± 4.1%, whereas the reconstruction of the electrograms or the instantaneous phase presented larger relative errors (i.e., 38 ± 15% and 48 ± 14 % respectively, P < 0.01). Conclusions Noninvasive reconstruction of atrial frequency maps can be achieved by solving the inverse problem of electrocardiography with a higher accuracy than temporal distribution patterns.Pedrón-Torrecilla, J.; Rodrigo Bort, M.; M. Climent, A.; Liberos, A.; Pérez-David E; Bermejo, J.; Arenal, A.... (2016). Noninvasive Estimation of Epicardial Dominant High-Frequency Regions During Atrial Fibrillation. Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology. 27(4):435-442. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/jce.12931S43544227

Gonadal-sparing total body irradiation with the use of helical tomotherapy for nonmalignant indications

Background: The aim was to demonstrate the feasibility and technique of gonadal sparing total body irradiation (TBI) with helical tomotherapy. Total body irradiation is a common part of the conditioning regimen prior to allogeneic stem cell transplantation. Shielding or dose-reduction to the gonads is often desired to preserve fertility, particularly in young patients undergoing transplant for non-malignant indications. Helical tomotherapy (HT) has been shown to be superior to traditional TBI delivery for organ at risk (OAR) doses and dose homogeneity. Materials and methods: We present two representative cases (one male and one female) to illustrate the feasibility of this technique, each of whom received 3Gy in a single fraction prior to allogeneic stem cell transplant for benign indications. The planning target volume (PTV) included the whole body with a subtraction of OARs including the lungs, heart, and brain (each contracted by 1cm) as well as the gonads (testicles expanded by 5 cm and ovaries expanded by 0.5 cm). Results: For the male patient we achieved a homogeneity index of 1.35 with a maximum and median planned dose to the testes of 0.53 Gy and 0.35 Gy, respectively. In-vivo dosimetry demonstrated an actual received dose of 0.48 Gy. For the female patient we achieved a homogeneity index of 1.13 with a maximum and median planned dose to the ovaries of 1.66 Gy and 0.86 Gy, respectively. Conclusion: Gonadal sparing TBI is feasible and deliverable using HT in patients with non-malignant diseases requiring TBI as part of a pre-stem cell transplant conditioning regimen